


At Root

by darthjamtart



Category: Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 22:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3464363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthjamtart/pseuds/darthjamtart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwen has always loved space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Root

**Author's Note:**

  * For [angel_vixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_vixen/gifts).



Escape pods have come a long way since the dark ages of space travel. For instance, Gwen thinks as she’s escorted down the corridor, she won’t run out of oxygen. The latest Pendragon systems built into the pod will keep her alive, if not sane.

_You don’t have to do this,_ she considers telling Arthur, but he does. She’s forced his hand. He’d cried outside her cell, the night of the trial, and Gwen had curled on the floor to sit as close to him as possible. He’s a good captain, a good husband. Just not the right one for her.

She won’t apologize for her ambition, even if she’s sorry for the damage it’s caused.

Lancelot is gone, memory wiped, synth-skin stripped away and joints dismantled. All those hours she’d spent entwined in his code, with the best Pendragon AI’s perfect programming learning her as well as she knew him. He saw what she wanted before she knew it herself, and nearly destroyed Camelot for her, would have sent the ship, their home, hurtling into the nearest sun to make her happy. 

Of course, that was never what she wanted. A ship of her own, yes. A crew to command. Now she will be queen of her own tiny domain: a padded seat that folds down for her to sleep, just enough space to stretch her limbs and a lifetime of recycled air.

The escape pod looks smaller than she remembered.

“Gwenhyfar,” Arthur says, standing in front of the hatch, but then he falters, his lips thin, and he steps aside. “I’m sorry,” he says, and turns his face away. She’ll receive no quarter from him, not when her actions nearly caused the destruction of his ship and crew.

She keeps her chin high and her back straight as she steps into the pod. “Goodbye, Arthur,” she says, and then the hatch closes, barely a tremor reaching her as the pod shoots her out into the endless black.

***

Gwen has always loved space: first as a girl, planet-bound, staring into the night sky and trying to identify each distant star, and later, as a woman, sent to study in an interstellar station’s cloisters. She’s earned her way through the atmosphere with hard work and a gut for mechanics, but no innovation could have gotten her onto Camelot without Arthur’s good favor.

Love has always been his weakness.

She can’t blame him for it, really. They are only human, after all. What orphan, given the tools and the skill, wouldn’t build himself a family? A circle of comrades, really: programmed to be perfectly loyal. Seemingly human but better, because what human would willingly let you inside their head, lie still and complacent while you write them into someone who will love you back?

Arthur was greedy to marry her when he already had so much. Human affection can run out; human kindness is uncertain. He traded Lancelot’s perfect love for her own human imperfections, and now he has neither of them.

The pod is so silent she can almost hear her own heartbeat. On Camelot, Arthur would press his head against her chest, let his fingers brush against her throat, her wrist. Like he needed the reminder that he was no longer the sole living inhabitant of his perfect kingdom.

She misses Lancelot, misses every line of code, every synthetic synapse, and there at last is the rage, spilling out in tears and the furious slamming of her fist against the console. Arthur could have reverted out her changes, could have saved Lancelot, but instead he had acted rashly, destroying what he’d once loved best out of all his creations.

Her fault, she knows. She could have kept her coding contained to smaller things: the automatic rise and fall of lights, temperature, the water allotment to each section of the hydroponics. She could have been the good wife, tending the garden, coding Arthur a happy home, even if it meant never being truly happy herself.

Though maybe Arthur should have known better than to think she’d be grateful, doing so.

In the cloisters, she’d snuck out to watch the docking merchant ships, bloated with cargo and personnel, and the military vessels vast enough to house entire cities. With all the traffic coming and going on the station, Gwen had never seen anything like Camelot. Arthur’s pride and joy, Arthur’s hard-won freedom. Arthur’s, when every other space-faring ship was owned by corporations, bound by bureaucracy and tethered by tentative committees.

Arthur’s, to venture where he pleased, when he pleased. For Camelot, Gwen had tried her best to be the same. Arthur’s, as entirely as she could. For a time.

“If you could choose, who would you love?” Gwen had asked Lancelot, once. As if he had a choice, whether to love at all. As if his answer hadn’t been predetermined, first by Arthur, then by her.

There was no crescendo when Lancelot turned to her. No crashing of thunder, no beating of drums, not even the quick and imperceptible flutter of a human heartbeat. Only Arthur’s grim visage as Camelot turned away from his charted course, following Lancelot’s stolen devotion.

She is a thief, and her hands are bruised, crescent imprints on her palm from where her fingers dug into the skin. If she’s lucky, there will be ships following in Arthur’s wake. Weeks, months, years from now, someone might chart a course through Arthur’s pioneering footsteps. Settlers or smugglers or saboteurs, searching for Arthur’s secrets. Best case scenario, she’ll still know something worth trading. Worst case...

She is a thief, and she is salvage: organic matter pressed into a life-preserving shell, alone and adrift in the vastness of space. _Find me,_ she thinks, pressing the indents in her palm against the console. There are no windows. She is where she always wanted to be, even if she can’t see it. This galaxy is hers, Albion in its unexplored entirety.

Gwen has always loved space, and love has always been her weakness.

  


Image of space provided by NASA and Hubble.


End file.
